


They almost always do...

by Nadia_Hernandez



Category: Charmed (TV 2018)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Cooking, Eventual Romance, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Forehead Kisses, Kissing, Past Lives, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Short, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot, Surprise Kissing, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 05:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20325949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadia_Hernandez/pseuds/Nadia_Hernandez
Summary: They do not always kiss, not in every lifetime.





	They almost always do...

**Author's Note:**

> Some Charmed! Cause I needed to write and/or post something after the miserable week of gallbladder related crap I have had. I hope everyone is as excited for the show to come back as I am.

They almost always do

They almost always kiss, each time they encounter each other on a soul’s meandering path towards its ultimate freedom or oblivion.

1.

He is an artist and she the mistress of his wealthy patron, a long, lithe figure wreathed in silk, satin and shadow with ringlets spilling around her face to pool in the decolletage so carefully displayed. He works diligently to study the curve of lip, the swan throat where a pulse beats faintly beneath her olive skin. She imagine that the brush is his fingertips, tickling flesh, and he proceeds with such attention to detail it raises the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

It must happen, it cannot fail to happen. She is his muse and the artistic spirit must be fed. They press their lips together tenderly at first, tentatively, and then with sudden hunger. He leaves the Serene City a fortnight later, leaves the portrait unfinished save her eyes, the hair that frames her face and the pulse at her throat. It hangs in a gallery nonetheless and arrests the eyes of passersby.

2\. She is a soldier in the First Michigan Colored Brigade of Volunteer Engineers and he the widow of a yeoman farmer with no slaves, over a hundred acres to work and half a dozen mouths to feed. His gaze is hard when the tired man with tawny skin stumbles across her front field to fall in a bloody heap on the threshold of her cabin, his mouth a thin, firm line. The curious eyes of a child peek out from behind his skirts and he does not know for a moment whether he will offer her a bite from the skillet in his hands or brain her with it and bury her in the back forty acres.

Kindness wins out, some core of charity not snuffed by two and a half years of war, and he carefully pulls the slug from her chest and stitches the wound. Her lungs are left weakened from it and she dies of a cough the next fall but they share kisses and more before then. They share the stirrings of a life that might have been.

3\. 

They are samurai, proud men in service to their lord. He is an older man, has fought for decades to preserve the honor of his master. She is younger, has been permitted a full sword for only a couple of years. What blossoms between them is what what Basho describes in his haiku, what the blush of spring does to flowers.

He meditates, sword laid across his lap, and strokes his long mustache. “You seem restless, Little One.”

“I am, Old Man,” she says. “There are a lot more of them than there are of us and they have guns. How are you so calm?”

He shrugs. “I am calm because I am too old to pace--it would hurt my knees.” 

She snorts. “You are not too old to swing that sword, I know.”

“I know, but too old to pace nonetheless.” He stands and gathers her in his arms. “We go to die, tomorrow, but we die together, Little One. We shall go hand in hand to fight evil in another world.”

The kiss they share is tender and the next day when both fall in battle with Meiji forces it is what is foremost on the mind of each.

4\. 

She is a statesman and he her clever, bookish son. Both are natural philosophers obsessed with how the world around them is organized. He catalogues the plants and animals, she the weather and quaking of the earth around Pompeii. Their colleagues call them queer but each knows that to master the earth--and Rome will master the earth and all in it--that one must first understand the phenomena therein.

“Are you sure you will be safe, tatula?”

“No,” she says. “But fortune favors the bold, my beloved son.” Her gaze rests on Vesuvius, smoking like the wrath of Vulcan made manifest as the tempermental god cursed at his forge. “We shall have much to discuss when I return.”

“Be sure that you do!”

“I will… you be sure that you mind my papers.” She draws him close, presses her lips against his forehead. “Mind them well, my boy.” It is the last time they speak, though he does watch his father’s ship go down in flames beneath the lapping waves of the Neapolitan Bay.

5.

They are in the kitchen preparing breakfast when it happens. Both of them are avid cooks, albeit with different views on what makes the perfect morning meal, and so it seems a natural way to spend time together in the sort of quiet conversation that two deeply nerdy people can enjoy before the rest of the household stirs. 

Her sisters like to sleep in but Dexter Vaughn was a Marine (and there are no ex Marines). You were ought of bed by six and you liked it or he would barge in with a literal, honest to God bugle. Harry does not sleep much anyway--he says that Whitelighters can make do on about an hour per day--and is almost always awake before she is, before the sun has even cracked the horizon.

He is frying up a rasher of bacon, humming and mumbling an old song about bread and dripping while she stirs the batter for pancakes. No eggs, since Maggie is vegan(ish), but blueberries, raspberries and chocolate chips. They are probably producing enough calories to feed a house full of totally stoned Michael Phelpses (or would that be Phelpsi? Macy can’t decide) but, hey, you only live once and she will be damned if she starves herself.

It happens when Harry turns to get a pair of tongs from the rack by the kitchen sink. They collide and for the briefest moment their arms entangle. It’s a comfortable, affectionate moment and she giggles, leans over to kiss the corner of his mouth. She cannot explain later on why she did this, precisely, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

Emotions flood her body and, to judge by the widening of his eyes, his too. She drops the spoon she has been using to stir and claps her hand in front of her mouth. “Oh my God, Harry,” she says. “I’m sorry… I… sorry. Consent.”

He gestures lamely with the tongs. “It’s quite all right. Given freely, if a bit belatedly.”

She smiles and is an instant later in his arms. This kiss is a real one, intentional, and opens into the full swelter of jasmine on a late summer evening. Macy feels her head grow light with the newness of all this but knows on a level deeper than the intellectual she has done this before. His lips seem familiar, his hands, his arms. Deja vu is one hell of a drug.

“I think the bacon is burning,” she mumbles. A cloud of smoke has begun to billow from the pan. They disentangle and he reaches clumsily to turn down the heat and plop a lid on the pot. It lands with a loud clang.

“Mel will have to do with an egg and cheese butty this morning,” he says. “I didn’t have any sausages.”

“She’ll be fine.” Macy glances at the skillet. “I think it’s hot enough for me to make Maggie’s pancakes, don’t you?”

“Assuredly.” He glances around nervously. “Do you think she will sense…?”

“She’ll squee herself to death if she does and I just don’t think I can take that this early in the morning. Not before my coffee.”

“And not before my tea.”

“So we will aggressively think about not this during breakfast. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“But Harry…”

“We will talk about it later… right?”

“For certain,” he says. “I think we may have much to discuss.”

They do not always kiss, not in every lifetime in every slice of the multiverse but they almost always do.


End file.
